October 1923

Mary and Matthew

"Congratulation my dear."

"On what?"

"This wedding was mainly your doing. Without your work they wouldn't have been able to get married today."

"Probably not. But you should congratulate your father too. He was quite persuasive when we talked to the Lord Chancellor."

"He got my mother to marry him. He must be good at persuading people to do something they don't want to do."

"As long as it turns out to be for the best, there is no problem with that. And it has turned out for the best, both for Edith and your mother."

"Yes."

"She looked so happy."

"Who? My mother or Edith?"

"I meant Edith. Your mother always looks happy, especially when your father is around. Or when she thinks about him."

"She thinks about him all the time when he is not around."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I always think about you when you are not around. Not consciously but for example when Mama and I make the plans for dinners the following week I keep thinking about what you would like. And she thinks about what Papa would like. We of course try our best to keep the balance. It's the same with many other things. When I read something in the newspaper that I think would interest you or make you laugh I immediately think 'I should tell Matthew about this'. It's just little things like that."

"I sometimes have a running commentary given by you in my head when I talk to clients who want impossible things. I hear how you would make fun of them."

"It is hard for me not to make fun of you right now. Hearing voices in your head."

"Make fun of me all you like, darling. Your tendency to be sarcastic and make fun of so many things is one of the reasons why I fell in love with you. And I said 'voice'. Not voices. I only hear your voice."

"Good. Because if you heard another woman's voice I'd have to be very jealous. Unless of course the voices belonged to Lizzie or Claire, I could live with that very well. Matthew, are you alright?"

"Yes. I just realized that we've been in love for 10 years."

"And that is a reason to pull a face like that?"

"No, darling. I just thought about what our marriage would have been like if we hadn't fallen in love."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I was just wondering. We were very lucky."

"Maybe."

"What?"

"I think we were lucky in having met and in you not being offended by my rejecting two of your proposals."

"I was very offended Mary, I just didn't give up."

"All right then, by you not giving up. But I think us being in love was not something that came along by chance. Before I accepted you, I talked to my father about his feelings for my mother. And he said that he didn't know why they fell in love and that it could have been fate, or luck, or because they wanted to be in love. And I am sure that they fell in love because they wanted to. They wanted a happy marriage and they knew that if they put in enough effort they could have it. And they did and they have been happy for 35 years now. And we are the same. Matthew, I wanted a happy marriage and so did you. I wanted to love you so I looked for things that would make me love you. And I asked you to do the same."

"You once said to me that should I see a possibility for love between us I should act on it. And I did."

"Yes darling and you still do so every day. And so do I."

"Do you think that you would have fallen in love with Patrick, had you married him?"

"Is that important?"

"I just want to know."

"I don't know. I didn't want to love him. I wanted him for the title and the estate."

"That is why you married me."

"Yes and no. I wanted that, there is no doubt about that. But by the time you started proposing, I had realized that I wanted something more."

"Is that why you once said that you would have only married Patrick if nothing better had turned up?"

"Yes. But at the time I would never have admitted that something better would have been the prospect of a very happy marriage."

"If Patrick hadn't died, do you think there would have been any way for us to get married?"

"Matthew, why are you thinking about this?"

"I just want to know."

"I don't know. I like to think that we would have met at some family function we had both been invited to and we would have had a fight because you would have been so presumptuous as to talk to me and Sybil would have said 'But Mary, isn't that exactly what you want? A man who doesn't care about the rules of society and who stands up to you?' and I would have realized that we would be very well suited and I would have told Patrick to marry Edith."

"That is an extremely unlikely story, my love."

"Maybe, but I don't care about what would have been. And neither should you. We are so happy, why dwell on things that would have meant us not being this happy? Isn't it more important that we are happy?"

"It is all that counts."

"Then kiss me."